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Thursday, 27 October 2011

Our heartiest congratulations go to Gary Louis Smith for taking second place in the London National Portrait Gallery’s BP awards for his stunning painting, Holly. We think he should have won first place!

Damir Simic unveiled a huge 200 x 275 cm painting called First Day. His June 16th exhibition in the City Museum of Sisak, Croatia, represents the culmination of an exciting project that lasted a year and a half—our photo shows Damir’s daughter sitting in front of the painting, to give an idea of its size. The catalogue for this exhibition was written by Bishop Vlado Kosic.

In May of this year, Damir’s extremely successful show Forgotten Beauty opened in the W.H. Patterson gallery in London, England. The show was visited in Damir’s studio by the Croatian President, Ivo Josipovic and was opened in London by H.E. Tomic, the Ambassador of the Croatian Republic to the United Kingdom.

The December 2010 issue of Playboy features an article on Damir and his beautiful nudes.

Naomi Marino, alumnus and former instructor at the Angel Academy, received a prestigious commission to paint the portrait of Dutch vascular surgeon and professor Bert Eikelboom. On the 31st of May, Naomi travelled to Utrecht for the unveiling of the portrait at an event to honour Professor Eikelboom’s achievements in his field. The painting now hangs in the permanent collection in Utrecht’s internationally acclaimed UMC (Universitair Medisch Centrum). The portrait was a glowing success!

Christina Mastrangelo held a three-month solo show of her work at the Michelle and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts. The reception had a huge number of people in attendance and her lovely still life Perishables quickly sold to a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Cesar Santos recently enjoyed his first one-man solo exhibition in New York City at the Eleanor Ettinger Gallery. Entitled Syncretism, the show is a collection of over 20 new paintings that explore the future of contemporary realism as it evolves from contradictory genres of art.

Cesar’s website is under construction for the moment, but you can see his work at: artlibre.net

Cesar Santos "Chicho in red"

Cesar Santos "3 Graces"

Nancy Fletcher was selected to paint the portrait of the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr John Saxbee. Bishop Saxbee expressed a wish to have a quietly understated portrait, wanting only a couple of items of personal significance featured in the painting.

As well as this, Nancy’s painting The Portrait Artist was selected for the Windsor & Newton Painting Award at this year’s annual exhibition for The Royal Society of British Artists, held at Mall Galleries in London.

Mark Cummings’s painting, Donnie Hawley of Hawleywood’s Barbershop was selected as a finalist by The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009. The juried exhibition included 49 works that were on view from Oct. 23, 2009 through Sept 6, 2010 at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The competition received 3,300 entries in a variety of visual arts media, from digital animation and video to large-scale drawings, prints and photographs and a plethora of painted and sculpted portraits.

Cyril de Chambrier has had great success and critical acclaim with his first solo show in Genolier, Switzerland. Subtitled The Homecoming of an Art that Transcends Nature, the exhibition includes paintings of landscape, still life and the figure.

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

The new packages of Nitram Charcoal now feature drawings by students of the Angel Academy. The Antique Horse Head charcoal drawing is by Megan Byrne and the Carpeaux Head drawing is by Nancy Fletcher. Each was done in class, using Nitram charcoal.

Saturday, 22 October 2011

Jay Blums & Naomi Marino

After many incredible years with the Angel Academy as students, teachers and friends, Naomi Marino and Jay Blums have left Florence to pursue their careers as full-time artists in California.

They are in process of renovating their new studio and home in Sebastopol, which has been converted from an old apple-drying barn in an idyllic country setting, close to the art community in San Francisco. They are very excited about their new life, but they also miss what they left behind and hope/plan to make regular returns to Florence whenever they can.

Naomi and Jay have been together since 2007 and they became engaged in the fall of 2010; they plan to marry soon after their move to the U.S.A. We at Angel’s wish them the very best in their new life and careers: they deserve every success.

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About the Academy

The Angel Academy of Art, Florence, offers an intensive programme in traditional drawing and painting. One of the very few such institutions in the world, the Angel Academy offers a curriculum designed to produce the highest calibre of professional artists, equipped to be leaders in the emerging renaissance of classic, realist painting.